


you terrible thing

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Blasphemy, Blow Jobs, Bonfires, M/M, Milkshakes, Murder, Necromancy, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Satanism, Temporary Character Death, Warlock Joseph Kavinsky, Witch Blue Sargent, Witchcraft, aka bro is back with a bang of satanism and homoeroticism, chilling adventures of sabrina au, horror movie double features, it's fall y'all, mentions of recreational drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 23:04:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Can I buy you a milkshake?” The mortal asked, flirtatious, clearly thinking he stood any kind of chance at winning this game.(AKA, Joseph Kavinsky is the unofficial king of the Academy of Unseen Arts. Satan’s favorite son, orphan extraordinaire, and leader of the Academy’sbaddestclique, the Dream Pack. All he needs now is an undead boyfriend, right?)





	you terrible thing

**Author's Note:**

> "bro," you may ask, "why the hell do you keep writing all of these wild AUs?" 
> 
> because I'm out here living deliciously, that's why.

_ lose my self control with you, _

_ do things i don’t want to do. _

***

Infernal Choir was a wash, as ever. The only one of them who cared about carrying a tune was Skov, and K mostly spent the entire class period rolling his eyes and elbowing Swan and Jiang, who stood on either side of him in the baritone section. Skov, a shining-voiced tenor, stood right in front of Madame Blackwood with his hands behind his back and his shoulders straight as a guillotine’s blade, _ such _ a fucking suck-up. 

After class, K threw his arms around Swan and Jiang’s shoulders, sighing heavily as they found a place beneath the statue of the Dark Lord in the courtyard to lounge before Conjuring. 

“I’m _ bored.” _He complained, loudly, stretched out across all three of his friends’ laps. Skov played with his hair. Swan rubbed aimless circles into his calves. Jiang raised an unimpressed, notched brow at his antics, but obligingly trailed the very edge of his nails over K’s taut belly. 

“You’re _ always _bored.” Jiang replied, and cut his eyes over to survey their classmates milling about, gossiping and simpering. 

“Not _ always.” _ Skov contradicted, licking his lips lasciviously to make it even clearer what he meant. He was the sluttiest warlock that K had ever encountered, Jacek Skovron. It was both charming and _ boring. _ Everything was _ boring. _ Samhain was ages away, Lupercalia had been _ months _ ago, and everything was a fucking _ washout. _

“What the heaven do I have to do to have some fucking _ fun?” _K moaned, carrying on with his theme of boredom and despair. “Why weren’t we born three hundred years ago?” 

Swan snickered. “You’d die without Snapchat. And coke.” His thumb rubbed especially hard into the tensest place behind K’s left knee. “And deodorant. Armani. Sushi.” 

“Did they have sushi three hundred years ago?” K pondered. “They had villages to terrorize. _ Full _ of mortals. And no smartphones or FBI investigations.” 

“They _ also _had the Inquisition, and the witch trials.” Jiang pointed out, lazily drawling, leant up against one of the statue’s cloven-hooved legs. 

“Pish fucking posh.” K grumbled. “I just want to _ do _something.” 

***

“Well, you’ll never guess what _ I _ heard.” Skov announced, decadent in his superiority as he sauntered into the dormitory that evening after his ‘vocal tutoring session’ with one of the older boys, Luke something. He had the sort of hectic flush high on his cheeks that meant he’d gotten a good fucking in, which always made him almost too smug to stand, but the kind of gilded glow that only fresh, _ juicy _ gossip gave his aura. 

K opened one eye to regard him, ignoring Swan’s jealous scowl and the way Jiang hadn’t looked up from his phone, texting someone like he constantly was lately, though he was mum on the suitor’s identity. Not even that was enough to pique K’s interest. 

“What?” K asked, irritable, when Skov only looked at him expectantly, smirking at him from the foot of his single bed. “Fucking _out_ _with it,_ Skovron.” 

“Mortals.” Skov said, and flung himself onto K, pressing their foreheads together until he was nothing but a pale blur with blue eyes. He ground their hips together companionably. “Some kind of festival, something about football, I don’t know, but there’s going to be a _ bonfire. _ And beer. And _ mortals.” _

Mortals, booze, _ and _ fire? 

K’s grin broke out slow and inexorable, stretching the muscles in his cheeks and making him appear all the more sinister for its terrible glee. 

“Where?” He breathed. 

***

K’s favorite thing about mortals, he decided as he ground down against the one beneath his thighs, was probably their innate lack of sense and self-preservation. 

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that the four of them were… _ other. _And yet as soon as they’d entered the field where the mortals were reveling, all eyes were upon them. It was hardly twenty minutes before K found himself tumbling into the back of a pickup truck with one of the locals, a mortal with beetle-black eyes that caught the firelight in a way that reminded K of a hellhound, intent and playful. 

“You’re so…” _ Easy. _ K sighed, grinning as he buried his face into the mortal’s neck. “Such a…” _ Slut. _It was the kind of thing you had to be careful about, when you were dealing with people who had a soul. And morality. 

(So, mortals.) 

The mortal stretched, practically purring. He was terribly handsome, all rosy skin and long limbs and white-blonde hair. 

“How come I’ve never seen you around before?” The mortal asked, dazed. Hazy. He was just… _ hot. _ Feeling him beneath K’s thighs was just… _ good. _

Even though the High Priest would have him by the _ thumbs _ if he found out that K, or any of the other students at the Academy, was slumming it with _ mortals, _ he couldn’t help but think that the mortal felt _ right _underneath him. He fit so well that it was like he’d been carved for the purpose, his hands fitting perfectly around K’s hips and his lips the perfect shade of bitten red, like blood. 

Kissing the mortal reminded him of the surge of power he felt at his Dark Baptism, when he’d first signed his name in the Dark Lord’s Book. Except it was almost, _ almost _ better, because there was no aftertaste of dread, no trapped feeling, like he needed to gnaw off one of his own limbs to get _ away. _

“I’m… not from around here.” K responded, and grinned wide and white, sure that there was hellfire in _ his _ eyes, no trick of the light. 

It was the truth- K wasn’t from _ anywhere, _ really. 

(An orphan, sent from the Unholy Lands to take his rightful place as a Kavinsky at the Academy, where generations upon generations of his blood before him had dwelt, learning the craft, practicing devotion to Lucifer Morningstar and all his illustrious gifts. He had no one but those he took for himself. He was not Blue Sargent, an orphaned half-breed raised by loving relatives. He was alone, but for the web of allies he wove with his cunning and his power.) 

He kissed the mortal to stave off any more questions, rocking his hips, and there was no need for any more talk, after that, beyond gasps and moans and _ oh, Satan _s. 

***

K couldn’t stop touching his own mouth, the next day in Potion Brewing with Professor Stoker. His lips felt obscenely swollen, bruised and sore, though he knew from catching his reflection in a nearby windowpane that they looked the same as they ever did. His skin was _ buzzing, _ better than any synthetic high. The mortal had been… _ exquisite. _K had never been with a mortal before, male or female, and it was, to his surprise, entirely different from fucking one of his magical peers. 

Witches and warlocks were soulless things, literally- their souls were woven into the fabric of the Dark Lord’s mantel, their names signed in blood to make the transaction stick. Sex was almost like getting your soul back, filling up the empty place that the Dark Lord had carved into your gut for the price of pleasure, living deliciously with sin and debauchery and _ power _as your gods. 

The mortal hadn’t been like a grasping, needy warlock. He’d been _ giving, _and joyful, and overwhelmed, like even the slightest touch of K’s hand was too much, too good. 

His brewing partner, Sargent, elbowed him in the ribs, startling K out of his reverie to notice the entire class staring at him, Professor Stoker included, with an impatient air. 

“Huh?” He asked, furrowing his brows, too distracted even to be vicious about it. 

“As I was _ saying, _Mr. Kavinsky,” Professor Stoker said, arching one dark brow imperiously. “What do you get when you add boomslang skin to a tincture of poppies and nightshade?” 

_ Draught of Living Death, _Sargent had written on her notes, pushed conspicuously toward him as her head tilted downward at it. 

“Uh, Draught of Living Death?” K answered, grimacing, irritated. 

Professor Stoker’s eyebrow rose even further. He scrutinized them both for a long moment, though Sargent had already passed a hand over her paper and erased the ink with a breathy spell, destroying any evidence of collusion. 

“Moving on…” The instructor finally said, turning back to the chalkboard. 

“Thanks.” K muttered gruffly beneath his breath. Unhappy to be in her debt. Anyone’s, really, but especially hers, the only other orphan in the Academy and therefore his only real competition, in terms of who had borne up better without parents to guide the way. 

Sargent only rolled her eyes, drawing her chair back to its usual place, as far away from K as their shared desk allowed. 

K’s hand found his lips again, tracing them restlessly over and over. 

***

It was becoming a problem. 

Two weeks. Two weeks, he’d been in this state of… _ smit. _Smittenness. Smitteny. Nothing made it better. Not fucking, not hexing, not napping. Not even the coke helped. 

_ Heaven. _ It was disgusting. K hated it. It was all terrible. He couldn’t stop thinking about the mortal, about the mortal’s peach-fuzz skin and his peony-pink mouth and the arch of his back, _ Satan preserve him. _

He’d gone two weeks, fourteen days, a fortnight, and yet all he could think about was _ the mortal. _

“Astral projection?” Jiang repeated, furrowing his brows, all judgement in the cross of his arms over his chest. “That’s… advanced.” _ And stupid as heaven, _he didn’t add, but it hung in the air between them as if he had. 

“Only for a bit.” K allowed, crossing his arms over his chest. Feeling defensive, and disliking it. 

Jiang sighed as if the entire world’s cares rested on him. Maybe they did. Maybe that was the task the Dark Lord had given him. 

(K was still waiting to be tasked. It had been long months since his Dark Baptism, and yet still Lucifer Morningstar was silent and faraway. He dreamt each night of being called upon to do some great act or another, but woke each morning cold and without purpose beyond aimless grabbing of whatever pleasures he found. They were all as hollow as he felt inside.) 

“Fine.” Jiang said, grudgingly. “But the _ first _sparrow you see, you’re coming up.” 

K grinned, reeling in Jiang to press a smacking kiss to his lips. Their teeth clacked. Jiang rolled his eyes but a smile played at the corner of his mouth even as he turned away. 

***

The mortal was laughing, head thrown back, blonde hair bright as precious metals under the poor lighting of the macabre little milkshake shop, Doctor Cerberus’. He was wearing the same jacket he’d worn the night of the bonfire, matching several of the other mortals’ attire and denoting him as part of the local football squad. It was charming. K wanted to rip it from his body and then make him watch as it burned in a pile in front of where he was fucking the mortal into delirious ecstasy. 

That was, unfortunately, beyond the scope of even the strongest, oldest warlock’s skill at astral projection. For now, K contented himself with breezing past the mortal and settling himself into a vacant seat, pleased when he was immediately noticed. 

The mortal dropped into the seat opposite him within seconds, breathless and grinning foolishly wide, inviting though he did not understand the nature of such an invitation. 

“Hey!” The mortal enthused, wide shoulders curving in towards K as he leaned across the table, eager as a dog coming to heel. Charming and alarming. K’s transparent chest was tight, his apparition heart thundering. “I thought you said you weren’t from around here!” 

K tipped his head, knowing how good he looked when he smirked. “I’m not.” He said, slinky and taunting even as he had to hide his hands beneath the table to mask their excited trembling. 

He’d never felt like this before. 

“Can I buy you a milkshake?” The mortal asked, flirtatious, clearly thinking he stood any kind of chance at winning this game. 

_ Charming. _K laughed, despite himself. “Sure.” He said, ignoring the sparrow perched upon a nearby decorative plastic skull in favor of watching the mortal’s ass as he made his way up to the counter. 

***

K awoke gasping, the candles half burned down and Jiang’s mouth a flat, unamused line of disapproval. He was grinning. Exhilarated. He could still feel Proko’s lips on his phantom ones and the tugging of the psychopomps on his spirit, trying to drag him to Hell with their talons like tenderhooks in all the fleshiest parts of him. 

“Lucifer’s fucking hoof!” He laughed, breathless. “That was- that was-” 

“Stupid? Irresponsible? Moronic?” Jiang listed, eyebrows furrowing further with each adjective as he became more and more animated with his incensed fury. 

_ “Bitchin’.” _K breathed. 

***

“I, um, made something for you.” Prokopenko gasped, head thrown back, as K’s throat worked, swallowing around his length. K _ loved _magic. He’d gotten the gag reflex suppression charm from Skov, who’d let him borrow it with only a minimal amount of coaxing and threats. What luck, to be friends with as many incorrigible sluts as K was. 

K laughed around Prokopenko’s cock, letting go of the mortal’s hips and letting him buck up uncontrollably as he came with an unholy yell, crackling and broken. _ Delicious. _

Prokopenko moaned, hiding his eyes behind his hands, following it up with a breathy laugh. “You’re unreal.” He accused, and then curled his hands into K’s hair, pulling him close for a kiss. 

“I’m something, alright.” K said, and drew Prokopenko into a long kiss, salty and bitter and _ hot, _ rolling them both over until he was beneath all of Proko’s leonine muscles and mortal _ heat. _

(It reminded him of a line from the passion play he’d performed in, back before Lupercalia had dawned and died; he’d played Lucifer and Sargent had been Lilith, docile and bewigged. _ Aren’t you cold, woman? _ he’d asked her, curving a hand around her cheek. She’d not even grimaced in disgust, as good an actor as he was, all wide eyes and longing when she’d replied _ I’ve been cold since the Garden.) _

“Here.” Prokopenko said sometime later, breathless and smiling, handing over a slim plastic case containing a CD. _ For K, _someone had scrawled in black permanent marker, all boyish clumsiness in the handwriting. 

Something in his stomach warmed. K hid his pleased smile into the pillow on Proko’s bed that he’d claimed as his own for the night, inhaling the scent of clean sweat and cheap body spray. “I bet it’s shit. All Timbaland and Justin Bieber.” He said, but didn’t grumble when Prokopenko’s arm came around his waist and Prokopenko’s nose buried itself into the space right below his ear, breath puffing out onto his skin. 

He’d have to get back for bed check at the Academy, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stay and rest his eyes for just a bit. 

***

“Sargent.” K said, feeling a little naked without his pack flanking him. “I need a word.” It was not a question but it felt like one, adding to the imbalance of their… _ relationship. _

Sargent, caught up in conversation with her only two friends in the entire Academy, blinked at him in surprise and distaste, both. “I… guess.” She drew out, as if he’d asked her to take a handful of owl shit off of his hands. Once he’d led her into an alcove, he whirled upon her so quickly she didn’t even have time to conceal the pink-handled switchblade she’d drawn from her pocket. He blinked at it in surprise and grudging respect. 

“Nice.” He commented briefly, pushing through the momentary awkwardness of possible attempted murder with the brusqueness of one raised among the blackguard witches and warlocks permeating the Unholy Lands. “Moving on. Sargent. You’re half-mortal.” It was a challenge not to sneer the words; K knew he probably had not entirely succeeded when Sargent’s lips flattened into an unimpressed line. 

“Really?” Sargent asked, tone as flat as her mouth. “I hadn’t noticed.” 

K’s hands wanted to wave around; the coke he’d snorted before classes this morning was wearing off and he was restless with it, running his tongue over his teeth reflexively. Wishing for either another line or maybe a spell to cast that would humiliate some enemy of his or another. 

“Yeah, well.” He said, and allowed himself to rock on the balls of his feet for a moment, cutting off the movement almost as soon as he’d begun it. “Anyway. You know about mortal shit. Like, CDs.” 

Sargent blinked at him, wordlessly. “Yeah, I know about CDs.” She said with baffled, unwilling fascination. 

“Good.” K said, grin more like a baring of teeth than anything approaching _ friendliness. _ “I need a favor.” 

***

“So, who the fuck is this again?” Ronan Lynch asked, squinting at K with open hostility over the screen of his laptop computer, headphones hanging loose around his neck and emitting a tinny, terrible electronic thumping that reminded K of some of the nightmares he’d had after taking LSD and watching _ Madame Butterfly _with Skov at the Sydney Opera House last summer. 

“My… _ cousin. _ Uh, Joey.” Blue sighed, rolling her eyes and carefully _ not _looking too-long at the handsome, polo-shirted mortal on her other side. K filed that information away, saving it for a rainy day. 

“And _ Joey _doesn’t have his own CD burner?” Ronan bitched, even as he squinted down at the scrap of parchment where K had scrawled his playlist down, fingers flying over his keyboard. 

“I’m from out of town.” K purred, fluttering his sooty eyelashes and enjoying the reflexive way Lynch swallowed in response. 

***

“Witches and warlocks are not burdened by the petty chemical bond that mortals call _ love,” _Father Blackwood said, hands behind his back and standing next to a diagram of the Thirteen Commandments at the front of the lecture hall. He was as dour and forbidding as ever. K was half-asleep, eyelids drooping and notetaking reduced to scribbles. Pentagrams and bats and daggers dripping blood. “Our Dark Lord is a jealous one. We must love none but Him. For if we put any other before Him, we can expect nothing but calamity.” 

_ lets go get sushi l8r, _K texted the Pack beneath his desk, hiding a yawn. 

***

“An accident.” K repeated, flat and low. 

Orla Sargent, luscious and beautiful and once more deadly a political player than Mata Hari (before her house-arrest sentence) set her jaw. She wore the uniform of her trade- a rubber apron, surgical gloves, compartmentalized emotions. “Yes. Drunk-driver hit him head-on.” 

Blue Sargent, K’s eternal rival, half-mortal and half-witch, almost audibly winced behind him. He could feel her pity. His hands were shaking. 

“No.” He heard himself say, as if he were a ghost and there was something possessing his body, twisting him into mortal despair without care for his pride or his power. _ “No.” _

“Kavinsky-” Blue began, as if she intended to _ comfort _him. 

A drunk driver. A car accident. 

The mortal- _ Prokopenko, _ with laughing eyes and a dimple in his left cheek but not his right, dumb as a puppy but _ sweet _too, touching him like he was something to be treasured and not power to be taken. 

Prokopenko, driving down the darkened rural roads in his pickup truck, the same one he’d tumbled into beneath K the night of the bonfire, maybe listening to the CD that K had learned from Sargent’s stupid mortal friends how to burn, alive until he _ wasn’t. _

There was rage in K that had been there for years, burning low and constant in his gut. Sometimes easier to ignore than others. The night of his Dark Baptism, he’d imagined that the Dark Lord would take the rage away and make him be at _ peace, _finally secure in the knowledge that he was too powerful to be hurt again. 

He’d imagined so many things, when he’d signed his name in the Dark Lord’s book. 

This… this _ tragedy _ was not one of them. This _ heartbreak. _ This _ horror. _

(This _ mortality.) _

“Shining _ fucking _ heaven!” He bellowed, jars and artifacts slinging themselves off of shelves all around to shatter against each other, a great singing cacophony of destruction that only made him _ madder, _ more terrible. “St. _ fucking _ Peter and all his _ goddamned _ priests! Satan’s _ fucking _wings!” Every blasphemy he knew came pouring out, then, unchecked, as the room around them was reduced to broken glass and his screaming. 

“That’s enough.” Persephone Poldma, once the greatest prophet their coven had ever known, said. Her arms came around him and he was shouting and weeping into her great cloud of mithril hair, curved down until she could stroke his back, easily, like he imagined his mother must have once done. “That’s _ enough.” _

***

“I can’t help you.” Sargent said, stood over his bed where he’d been laid for three days and nights, finally summoned by Jiang while Skov and Swan were gone, covering for him in Infernal Choir. He’d not told any of his pack what had happened, but Jiang had always been more observant than either of the others, more attuned to his moods and goings-on. “Kavinsky. I _ can’t.” _

K barked a laugh, hoarse and painful like rusty nails coming up out of his throat. It was at times like these that he loathed Blue Sargent the most: when she was standing haloed and angelic and _ mortal, _so above him and his ilk that it was an insult to witchhood and the Dark Lord, both, for her to stand among them as an equal. 

The Dark Lord, who would not come to him, who would not soothe his pain. He’d bruised his knees to the bone praying by his bed each night, all Thirteen Commandments, every Hail Satan, all the rote begging he’d learned since childhood at his grandmother’s tutelage. 

“No,” he corrected her. “You _ won’t. _ There’s a difference, Sargent.” _ Bitch, _ he wanted to hiss, _ stop looking at me like that! _ Because she had pity in her eyes, she _ pitied _ him, just as her family did, when they bundled him back to the Academy in the backseat of Calla Johnson’s beat-up junker car, half-insensate with his fury and his grief, his _ pain. _He hated her. He hated all of them. 

He hated _ Prokopenko, _for living and for dying, both. 

Her fists balled up at her sides. She held her breath. All the air in the room stood still. 

“Fine.” Blue said, like it tore at her to agree but she knew she couldn’t disagree, either. Like _ she _ owed _ him _something. “I’ll help you.” 

“You’re gonna want to bring your friend.” He told her, rising slowly out of his bed with all of his limbs protesting from being held too-still for too-long. “The Harrowed one.” _ The dead one, _he didn’t say, but knew she understood him, anyway. 

There was more than one reason he needed Blue Sargent’s help for this resurrection. Her association with a dead warlock was no insignificant one. 

***

The grave was a modest thing, a slim headstone above freshly-tilled dirt. Sargent stood guard, forbidding and wary with one of their shovels clutched tight in her hands. The mortal part of her was repulsed by him, K knew. 

(The witch part of Sargent was _ also _ repulsed by him, but that was for entirely different reasons. K was repulsed by himself; he couldn’t begrudge her that.) 

The body in the grave was pale and frozen and perfect, rot and decay not touching Prokopenko’s beauty. Not yet, anyway. The scent of the embalming fluid was thick in K’s nose. He traced his fingertips over Prokopenko’s jawline, leaning down to inhale the sterile scent of Prokopenko’s shellacked hair. 

“Awaken.” He begged, hoping for a miracle that was not forthcoming. Hoping against hope he wouldn’t have to perform this act of abomination. _ Necromancy, _something not even K relished, despite his wicked love for all things taboo and terrible. 

The body, _ Prokopenko, _did not come suddenly back to life. There were no miracles to be had. Not without a price. Grimly, K hauled it out of the open casket, using only a bit of magic to levitate the deadweight to the surface, depositing him gently upon the dewy grass. Sargent looked down at him, both apathetic and aghast. 

K set his shoulders. “Let’s go.” He said, and Sargent nodded. 

“It’s too late to turn back now.” She conceded, the first words she’d spoken since they’d begun to dig. 

The moon was full and rosy-ringed overhead. _ Blood on the moon, _ K could hear his long-dead grandmother murmur in his ear, _ sign of trouble not far behind. _

That was okay, though. 

K was used to trouble.

He had a sacrifice to catch. 

***

“This isn’t right.” Sargent said, but Noah only shrugged. 

“What’s ‘right’?” He asked, as frightening as he ever was with his thirst for death, a proper warlock for all that he had been dead for seven years. In the dark with the newly-caught mortal struggling against his bonds, Noah was keen-eyed and so very _ not _ alive. So very _ not _a comfort to Sargent, K could tell, though every time the mortal grunted wildly like a treed animal wounded and chased-down she looked down at him dark-eyed and just as keen. Like she couldn't help herself. 

K held the knife tighter, kneeling down between the two bodies. One dead but soon to be alive, and one alive but soon to be dead. All at his hand. The power coursing through him was all sweet fizzling anticipation and lead-heavy dread. 

He was a god. 

“Hounds of Heaven,” K began, imagining Prokopenko’s shining eyes and sunshine grin. “Hounds of Hell, Hounds of Earth, Guardians of the Door, we summon thee to help us resurrect the fallen son.” 

“Nos si vocare te.” Sargent and Noah intoned. “Nos si vocare te. Nos si vocare te.” 

K raised the knife, its blade catching the moonlight. 

“We bow before the Door that divides the World of the Living from the World of the Dead. With humble gratitude, we ask that it be opened.” He said, and felt the place inside of his chest vibrating where his soul once was. 

“Aperi ianuam,” Sargent and Noah chanted, Sargent’s cheeks growing pinker and her eyes growing even darker as they did so. K could see how she relished it, in the darkest parts of her that she hoped to smother with every moment spent denying her nature. “Aperi ianuam. Aperi ianuam.” 

The mortal screamed behind his gag. Prokopenko lay silent and cold. This had to work. 

It _ had _ to. 

He could hear the gate creaking open on the wind, the breeze picking up suddenly. 

“Unholiest of spirits!” K shouted. “We offer thee a life for a life! O mighty Dark Lord! By whom all is set afire! Thy power be thy path, thy will my desire!” 

“Vita est vita. Vita est vita. Vita est vita.” 

The knife came down, a whip-sharp slicing arc. The mortal, who had been bourbon-addled behind the wheel of a fucking Hummer the night that Prokopenko’s life was snuffed out, choked as his throat was opened up, spraying hot and bright over Prokopenko’s body in its nicest Sunday suit. 

“The Door opened,” the three of them said together like they were one being— K and Sargent and Noah. Gone from _ I _ to _ we. _“The price paid in blood. Ilya Prokopenko, we entreat thee. Rise. Rise. Rise!” 

Ilya Prokopenko gasped for breath, thrust upright into a sitting position. 

K’s whole body _ shuddered _with the force of what they’d done. 

***

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Shh, shh.” K whispered, helpless, as Prokopenko woke screaming from another nightmare, the only kind of sleep he could find since his resurrection. They’d hidden him in their dormitory, but he knew it was only a temporary fix. It wasn’t like he could return the resurrected boy to his own home, his own parents. His parents had buried him; there was no more home for him to go back to. 

Skov and Swan were sitting up in their beds, eyes flashing catlike and yellow in the darkness as they watched him fruitlessly try to soothe Prokopenko, shaking and covered in a cold sweat. They didn’t attempt to help, to intervene. 

They also hadn’t yet snitched on him to Father Blackwood, though, so at least there was that. It wasn’t like K expected them to sing Proko lullabies, or anything. Their silence was as good as a hot posset and lavender smudge sticks might be, in K’s mind. 

He was spending his nights awake with Proko; he was failing half of his classes. He was _ failing. _

Everything was coming apart at the seams. 

_ Dark Lord, _ he prayed silently, lips moving soundlessly as he stroked Proko’s shaking back with clumsy comfort, unused to the gesture, the tenderness, _ please, help me. Please. Please. _

The Dark Lord did not respond. 

***

“Why did you bring me back?” Prokopenko asked, toneless but with begging eyes, once such a beguiling shade of black and now pale as the fur of the fox that Skov kept as a familiar, a tricksy goblin called Herondale. His hair, too, was lighter, and his skin. Like all of him had gone colorless, death leeching away something that was irreplaceable even with magic. Even with blood. Even with all that K had done. 

K swallowed thickly, hands itching to take up residence upon Prokopenko’s frosty cheeks. To _ warm _ him, leaving behind trails of pink wherever they went. “Because I wanted to.” He answered, imperious and impetuous and selfish and _ aching. _

Prokopenko, slow as an old man because of the stiffness still rooted in his marrow from his time in the void, sat down on the nearest perchable surface. “I don’t understand.” He rasped, pressing a hand to his chest over where he’d been sliced open by Orla Sargent in the basement of the funeral home at 300 Fox Way. It had become a thick, knotty white scar. Proko rubbed over it restlessly, reflexively, a new habit he’d picked up since his resurrection. 

Like it pained him, maybe. 

_ I don’t either, _ K wanted to tell him, his stomach hollow and full of rotting dread, regret, loneliness. _ I was so alone for so long. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. You made me feel warm. I was cold for so long. _

“You are no longer mortal.” K whispered into the back of Proko’s neck, coming up behind him and nosing at the silver-white hair there, reaching up beneath his returned boy’s sweater to touch the scar, too. “You are _ mine. _The Dark Lord saw fit to give you back to me, when you’d been stolen by the False God.” It was the only explanation he could stomach to speak without choking. The only thing he could think to say. The only thing he was brave enough to say. 

He could practically feel breathy, hot laughter on the back of his neck, a reminder of the Dark Lord’s will. He’d been given Prokopenko back, yes, his ruin of a body and a fraction of his soul. None of his lightness, none of his _ mortality. _ He’d been given a _ reminder. _The Dark Lord did not allow his Children of Night to go consorting with mortals, after all. 

_ Our Lord is a jealous one, _Father Blackwood had said. 

_ No fucking shit. _

How young he’d been, once, yearning for nothing but the gilded burning touch of Satan’s claw. How fucking _ stupid. _ It was only weeks ago but seemed like decades, an endless spanse of time between meeting Prokopenko and _ caring _ for him, realizing that mortals were perhaps _ not _ the mindless scum they had been portrayed to be in all of the passion plays and parables and textbooks he’d consumed up until actually _ meeting _one. 

“I wish-” Prokopenko began, trembling, but did not finish the sentiment. K’s mind filled in the blanks easily enough. _ I wish I’d never met you. _

“Yeah,” K murmured, biting the inside of his cheek. “Me too.” 

***

_ One Year Later _

“Do we have to sing the same three fucking songs every year?_ ” _ K groaned, stretching, as they came out of the Infernal Choir room. “If I have to sing _ Always Is Always Forever _ one more fucking time I’m going to shove a tuning fork into my _ ears.” _

Swan snickered, his fingers tangled with Skov’s and their hips bumping with every step. “Nah, I think Lady Blackwood’s just given up.” 

“Are we going to Dorian’s tonight?” Skov asked, drawling, swinging his and Swan’s hands between them. They were disgustingly cute. K hated them for it, a bit. For their compatibility, their ability to be _ together _ with minimal pain, hardly any suffering. They’d done their _ will-they-won’t-they _ dance and come up _ happy, _kissing in corridors and chasing each other through the woods on Lupercalia. 

They didn’t know how lucky they were. He _ hated _them for it. 

“Nah,” Jiang said, on his other side. “I’ve got a meeting.” By this he meant _ I’m meeting up with my hot witch hunter boyfriend, _but all three of them pretended not to understand. 

“What about you, K?” Swan asked, caramel eyes all-knowing when they looked over at him. Too soft. Too pitying. 

Everyone who knew pitied him, these days. It was suffocating. 

“I’ve got a date.” K replied, shrugging. “Did any of you cunts do the Conjuring homework?” 

***

Prokopenko waited beyond the Academy’s gate, his letterman jacket traded for a black leather one that Skov had picked out for him as a Yule present, his hands shoved into its pockets. He was as indifferent and tall and pale as a marble statue; his grin was not wide and foolish, nor were his eyes dark and glinting. 

Still, K jogged the last few steps before he was able to fling his arms around Proko’s neck, drawing him into a kiss both biting and _ filthy. _ Proko’s hands were chilly where they tucked up into the warm dip of his lower back, beneath the Thrasher crewneck he’d worn to class and the coat he’d put on before braving the October cold. 

“Hey.” He murmured, pulling away only far enough to press a stinging bite to Proko’s jawline, raising a pale purple welt. 

“Hey.” Proko returned, milky-eyed. His mouth tasted like gravedirt and peppermint patties. K ached all the way through, reminded of what he had done. 

Proko’s shoulders and his biceps were wider than they had been in life, football leanness giving way to the kind of bulk that gravedigging and heavy-lifting for the Sargent Mortuary and Funeral Home brought. K hated all of the Sargent women for their kindness and their pity, but loved them silently, too, for the room they’d cleared out for Proko to sleep in and the safety they gave him by allowing him into their fold. 

“Wanna go see the double feature? And then go to Doctor Cerberus’?” K cajoled, twining their hands together and feeling like the naive virgin-pure girlfriend at the beginning of every old horror movie. Ready to be devoured by the outside world’s terrors masquerading as a swamp monster from the deep. He hated it. He could feel the outside world pressing in on them both, the coming struggles ready to disrupt this uneasy, unhappy half-peace they’d found. 

He wasn’t angry anymore. He was too exhausted to be angry. He was just hurt and tired. Old long before his time. _ Burdened. _

Proko smiled faintly, though, and K could imagine the boy he’d been grinning puppyishly and leading the way with a hooted _ hell yeah! _ Maybe in some other branching of the tree of fate, he and that living, joyous boy were happy together. Maybe in another he’d had the foresight not to do what he’d done, or at least had the strength to _ un _ do it instead of choosing the coward’s path. Living with the shade of the mortal he’d loved instead of letting him _ go. _

“Do I have to wear the glamour?” He asked, though he undoubtedly knew the answer. He was a dead man. He would have to let K settle a spell over him like a sheet of cobwebs or else deal with everyone in town’s hysteria at seeing their deceased quarterback returned from the grave. 

“Yeah.” K said, bitterness in his mouth, thick on his tongue. He grinned, though, and suppressed the urge to scream. Rallied up with false cheer, leering at the monster he’d wrought. The thing that was once Prokopenko but now just wore his skin and muddled through the motions of his mannerisms, false and forged and still K’s _ favorite. _ “But if you’re good, I’ll suck your dick in the theater between shows.” 

***

_a wreck you make _

_you leave me in your wake. _

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


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